


With the Sun in My Eyes, You Were Gone

by 2towels



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Keith finds him, Lance has been missing for a lil bit, M/M, Memory Loss, me 5 hours ago: u kno what i should write a fic, vibe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26573050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2towels/pseuds/2towels
Summary: Keith, like all other nights in the months before, wakes up with his arm outstretched. His fingers are reaching for nothingness in the small room he’s rented on the swap moon, and inside his chest is the hopeful feeling soaring through, quickly being replaced with loss and yearning.“I miss you.” Keith says to the ceiling as his hand falls. He doesn’t often allow himself that, not wanting it to be heard by his fellow Blade members or not wanting to indulge the simple words lest they break down as he says them. He feels his gloved hands curl in the ratty bedsheet, tightening and tightening around nothing. There’s more at his lips, his mind churning and his chest heaving, but nothing else comes out. He has work to do.==Keith is looking for Lance so he can feel at home again.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 247





	With the Sun in My Eyes, You Were Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mmeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmeme/gifts).



> Shoutout as always to my wife who put off binging anime with me so I could write and also listened to me listen to "In a Crowd of Thousands" from the Anastasia broadway about 100000000000 times, which is what this song is named after
> 
> I didn't edit this because I was very eager to just post it do we vibe

They’re not nightmares anymore, but that could be debatable. Keith finds himself yearning after each when his eyes slip open, reaching for nothing more often than not. He sleeps with the sun in his eyes, in a way, and when he opens them it’s both a relief that he can see and a blow that he is facing the reality of his dream once again. It used to be much more frequent, replaying that moment even more often than the night would bring it to him, but it was a part of him now—a memory he deserved to never be free from, and a nightmare he had to face every morning just as much as he had to yearn for every night.

Hunk or Shiro would tell him it was obsessive. Hell, his own stoic mother had pulled him into her a month into destroying himself and pleaded with him to rest, if only for the sake of what he’d lost. Keith couldn’t fault anyone for their words about the subject, everyone feeling the loss just as constantly and just as poignantly as Keith did. He wasn’t alone in his yearn.

But he did, each morning. He woke with his chest lifting in a sickening way, his eyes able to see the nothingness at the end of his hand. No matter how he urges himself, his subconscious will never stop reaching, and he thinks he can live with that if he must.

A small, chirping alarm wakes him more fully, and Keith slides off of his hammock to grab his communicator. Its light floods Keith’s wing of the barracks on the base, and he tries to cover its brightness if only slightly while he takes in the message he must have woken for.

Kolivan is assigning him to the XoP section of the galaxy, to a small swap moon attached to _Massalet Hug_ ’s orbit. The mission is delivering material waste to a trader by the name of #10029, who will give Keith material in return that will be processed by part of the blade responsible for new recruits. They had more and more each movement, thanks to the resolve for peace Voltron left in its wake.

It was a grocery run, though, and it irritated Keith to an extent. He didn’t have to ask Kolivan about it to know his performance was the direct cause of any mundane errands and missions such as these. He prepares in silence, throwing changes of clothes and rations together before he can think twice to attempt any type of refusal. Reeins was suspiciously free this week, he could run a stupid supply mission just as well as Keith could.

“It’s not a punishment.” Krolia beckons him from outside of his pod when he enters the loading dock. “And you know that.”

“I know.” Keith says, sass not needed because he knows better than to whine as both an adult and a seasoned Blade Member. It _does_ feel like a punishment, though, and it shows on his face.

Krolia moves off of the pod and allows Keith to start throwing his things in and doing his safety checks while she speaks. “Flying has always cleared your head, even before I met you. Shiro told me that, once.” Her strong hand settles between his tense shoulder blades. “I wish I had any words to comfort you, but there will be no wasted effort on our side while you’re gone. You need to fly, and we will keep our eyes on our recon for the Blue Paladin.”

Keith stares at his controls, feeling his expression grow tighter, a pinch between his brows he wishes a once-familiar hand would smooth away. _Wrinkles, dummy_. The once-familiar voice would say. “I know.” He repeats. He drums a hand on the start switch for his liftoff procedure, and before he can open his mouth fully to say anything else, his mother is at his door side cutting him off.

“We will call you the moment it seems we’ve found so much of a hair.” She assures, knowing what he was going to say. She shuts his door for him and he sighs at the sound of it compressing into the pod fully. He can’t hear her when he glances over and sees her lips moving, but he knows from experience that she’s quietly wishing him a safe flight.

Does his mother understand, he wonders, what it feels like to be powerless to the loss of someone so deeply rooted into your person? He thinks she would, but hasn’t brought himself to ask her, feeling too polite to bring up some aftermaths of her biggest regrets. He thinks of his father in his mother’s memories, flashes of the love they shared echoed in Keith’s mind on the way to the Altean Colony. He wonders, if he just told her the simplest words about his father that he knew to be true—that he never blamed her having to go, he knew it was to protect them—would she say the same in return? Would she pretend their feelings and departures were the same?

Keith flies like he always does, but the pods aren’t able to take the speed as well and the recklessness of it sometimes sends shooting guilt down his spine. He almost slows himself to a crawl after the feeling just to fun around and make the mission take three times as long and make sure Kolivan never sends him for supplies again.

His communicator blips again, and Keith waits for it to connect with the pod before he processes that he’s receiving a video call.

He wants to deny it, but it’s Pidge, and he never could do that as miserable as he was feeling. Her face fills half his dash on a screen, making the emptiness of space seem a little more friendly.

“Woah, you look like shit!” Pidge laughs immediately, even though she looks probably worse than even Keith does. “Have you brushed your hair in weeks? Jeeze.”

“Hey.” Keith ignores her, eyes fixed straight ahead, “What’s going on?”

Something about his tone shifts the gaze Pidge is fixing him with, and Keith can’t bring himself to feel bad about that. He knows Pidge is taking this all as seriously as he is, but he can’t bring himself to pretend there are moments where he can lift his spirits like the others can, so he doesn’t. “Okaaaay.” Pidge drawls, pulling up something out of Keith’s view where her screen is pointed. “I just wanted to check on you because my new fancy trackers said you were on the move, and I thought it was worth a looksie. Heading to a swap moon, I see?”

Keith deftly moves around a heap of trash hurdling slowly through space. “That I am.” He concedes, “Need anything while I’m an errand boy?”

“You know, actually…” Keith instantly regrets asking, because he sees the light in her eyes gleam behind her frames. “You know that poster I was looking for forever ago? I still haven’t found it, and swap moons are the perfect place for fan merchandise.”

It almost brings a chuckle out of Keith, but he settles on a quirk of the lips. Pidge and Matt have been steadily collecting as much Green Paladin merchandise as they could get their hands on to gift bomb their parents with whenever the opportunity presented itself. The Holts themselves could host the next VoltCon with the sheer number of unique items that have been produced in their image. “Consider it done.”

“Awesome!” Pidge doesn’t spare the enthusiasm, “You’ve seen the room recently, so even if you just see something that looks a little funny or unfamiliar, that works, too. Matt just brought home a twenty-foot cutout of me made of steel. My mom had to put it in the backyard, and I’m pretty desperate to top that.”

“Her garden’s going to look great this year.” Keith thinks aloud, wondering if Pidge’s cutout was twenty feet, would the rest of them be closer to thirty?

She snorts to herself, then mutters something under her breath. “Can I ask you to do a real favor for me while I have you?” Her tone turns a little more serious, and Keith immediately cuts his eyes towards her properly so she knows to continue. “Give me a call once you hit the moon and test out the new track cycle. That’s favor one. Favor two is please give Hunk and Shiro a call, they’re really worried about you. Allura, too, but I know you guys are having trouble talking again.”

“They don’t have to worry about me.” Keith says automatically. It seems like everyone does, now, but himself, but he’s been handling himself a lot better than he feels like he could be in this scenario. He only shuts down once a week or so out of obliterating thoughts about his inactivity. “I’ll call them soon.”

She looks away from the screen when something pops off-camera. “Good. Okay. We miss you, too, by the way. You know that. Swing by sometime.” He opens his mouth and she talks louder, “And you’re doing an amazing job with your relief efforts, even if you’re just running an errand right now. That’s all I’m going to say!” It’s unsaid, but she clearly needs to go, so Keith nods and pauses before simply nodding again. He doesn’t know what’s spurring Pidge on about that specifically, but he can guess it has something to do with looking like shit, so to speak.

“I’ll see you later, Pidge.” He says before he clicks the video off, processing everything they’ve said. Keith has tried a thousand times on a thousand different orbital surfaces by now to use Pidge and Hunk’s current tracking project. It feels like all he does is open starmaps and cross out places he’s already tried, erasing all his progress with each prototype improving the last and reversing their footprints on each planet with the ability to retrace them even better.

* * *

_The sky is blinding on this planet, which makes Lance look radiant on his float as he smiles and waves along with other important, notably handsome diplomats. The pretty-boy float, Lance had bragged about being a part of. The parade is a wash of colors that can barely distract away from the sheer brightness of Lance’s float, and Keith thinks privately that they did choose the best of them to be part of those pretty boys up there. Lance commands the gaze of the crowd, and it seems his every breath and smile and step is in tune with the surrounding bands._

_Keith doesn’t think he’s quite been spotted down the street yet, but he’s looking forward to the look of surprise on Lance’s face when their eyes do meet._

* * *

Keith, like all other nights in the months before, wakes up with his arm outstretched. His fingers are reaching for nothingness in the small room he’s rented on the swap moon, and inside his chest is the hopeful feeling soaring through, quickly being replaced with loss and yearning.

“I miss you.” Keith says to the ceiling as his hand falls. He doesn’t often allow himself that, not wanting it to be heard by his fellow Blade members or not wanting to indulge the simple words lest they break down as he says them. He feels his gloved hands curl in the ratty bedsheet, tightening and tightening around nothing. There’s more at his lips, his mind churning and his chest heaving, but nothing else comes out. He has work to do.

The alien woman who had rented him the room looks less than pleased to see him when he exits, so he assumes he’s already late to checkout. He looks at his watch, which isn’t really helpful as it’s still displaying Earth time at all times and that doesn’t necessarily translate to a moon. At least he knows if it’s a good time to call any of his friends, he guesses. He checks, then, his tracker, and it gives the same sad blip of nothingness it always has. If Lance has so much as breathed in the direction of a planet, the tracker usually has a small kick of activity like it’s current reading, which is not helpful and usually leads to nothing. He has to resist the urge to tuck it away entirely as he leaves, snipping it to his waist instead and moving on.

The material exchange is smooth, because Keith has worked with #10029 before, and he doesn’t care much for chit chat or wasted time. Sometimes, he doesn’t even bother with a goodbye, which is just the case today and just fine by Keith. He’s not feeling chatty much either. It’s a hot, bright day, and his Blade uniform isn’t as thoroughly temperature regulated in mild environments that don’t reach extremes like this won’t. So, his body heat is his problem unless he’s hurdling through space.

He thinks his extra mission for Pidge was a mistake, but it was indulgent of her to even ask and he’d like to see her smile when he actually does it. Despite the heat he’ll push around piles of junk at stands and try his best to find some ominous or obscure Pidge merch that isn’t filthy or upcharged out the ass.

Keith thinks, as he turns another corner to start on a new avenue in the stands, that Pidge should just switch to a new autographed item every time the opportunity presents itself. Easier, cheap, just as funny (to Keith, at least).

The tracker at his waist begins chirping stronger, so Keith knows he’s close to another Voltron-centered stand, at least. There’s only so much fine tuning with these things, and more than once his hopes have been surged upwards only to be led to a completely authentic knick knack that the Blue Paladin himself once sneezed on. He can at least use the tracker to make Pidge’s search a little easier, in that sort of hilarious way.

He unclips it from his waist, scanning over the constant readings as he walks and they update. His range reading surges upwards, meaning he’s right on top of the goal, and even when he’s been down this lane before and as much as he tells himself not to hope to see Lance’s face when he lifts his head, he can’t help but do so. He’s in front of a dinky little table that has nothing but junk laid on it, pure scrap that should also be sold to #10029. Keith wonders, if he can pinpoint the something, if it’s nice to tell some poor swap moon salesman that something at this table had been touched or sneezed on or maybe a million other things that connected one of these items to the former Blue Paladin. People eat that shit up quick, Keith had found.

Keith feels his breath leave him slowly, unaware he was holding it, the longer he looks at the junk. There’s nothing that’s even a memento of Lance, it’s just junk and trash and more junk. He hears someone working behind the tent that’s closed behind the table, and he wills himself to make his feet move before he gets cajoled into purchasing garbage.

The tent parts, though, and the chirps from the tracker instead become a continuous, low wine. That’s new. Keith glances down at it, wondering if he can get it to shut up, but someone bumps into the table and he hears a voice that makes him drop the tracker entirely.

“Hey, sorry! I had to go grab something, hope I didn’t keep you waiting.” Keith’s head whips up, a hand moving to shove his hair from his face and see as clear as he can. Lance is before him. Lance has a rippled small scar poking into one eyebrow and moving toward his temple, where his hair is shaved across as well. Lance’s face is covered in grease and dust, and his eyes are blue and beautiful, but dull. Lance is holding a piece of garbage in his hands, the aforementioned something he had to grab, and Keith faintly holds out a hand, yearning.

He can’t imagine what his expression has become, but something changes in Lance’s when Keith reaches out. He hesitates, setting the garbage down, and his hands raise into a placating gesture. He glances away to make sure his eyes aren’t meeting Keith’s, and says, “I know. I know. I look _just_ like the Blue Paladin of Voltron.” There’s something tired and strained about the way he says it, and Keith’s hand falls the second the words hit.

His mind is racing, and his tracker is still going off. Just-Like-The-Blue-Paladin-Lance reaches down under his table to grab at the device, turning it over in his hands as he shoots straight again and laughing. “The shock usually takes a minute, that’s fine.” The pitch has gotten higher since Lance has touched the device, and it sends the reality home for Keith that it’s definitely Lance. It is Hunk and Pidge lovingly made and Altean infused technology. It was Lance. “Is this a bomb?” Lance asks.

“No. It’s—You don’t just look like the Blue Paladin, you…” Keith is fighting his own uncertainty. There are so many minute changes. Where are his Altean marks? Where is the brightness in his eyes? “Are you Altean?”

Lance sighs, “Are you going to buy something or not? I’d love to chat, but you’ve got to understand I hear this literally all of the time.”

 _Because it’s true_ , Keith thinks. _Because so many people who love you are across the galaxy looking for you_.

“Really.” Keith thinks to say, hearing his communicator ping from his belt. He reaches out for the tracker, plucking it gently from Lance’s hand and zeroing in on familiar scars and callouses. “What is your name?” He turns off the tracker with a single cue, and the noise dies down to only the activity around them, seeming suffocating.

Maybe Lance just doesn’t like the approach Keith is taking, or his suspicion, but he narrows his eyes and locks with Keith’s gaze again. “You can call me Blue if it satisfies you.” He says suddenly, “I know you think I’m him anyway. Now,” he gestures down to his table, “Anything interest you?”

Keith looks at his slim frame, where dust beaten clothes hang just a little too lightly. “I work with the Blade of Marmora,” He thinks to say, scrambling and feeling as if he’s back at the parade, just a hair away from Lance again and inevitably going to let him go. “I’m working recon right now and we think you could be of assistance to us. I need you to come with me to our base so we can convene with our leader.”

Lance groans, and Keith blinks as the other throws his head back. “I’m being strongarmed by a Blade, are you _kidding_? Man, I’m just trying to eat and get off of this planet, what could possibly be the matter I can help you guys with?”

“That’s classified.” Keith says, mentally grasping for Lance to hold on. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that until we are secure.”

Lance rolls his eyes and shoves his way back into his tent. “Whatever.” Keith can hear him moving noisy objects and probably more garbage around, and for a second he wonders if he should hop the table to make sure Lance doesn’t escape through any back route. Whatever’s made him not fond of the Blade, he wants to avoid it being an issue of their cooperation. Nothing matters more at the moment than making sure Lance makes it back to the base so he can be assessed, because nothing matters more than the fact that he’s facing Lance at the very moment.

Lance emerges just a moment later, a lightly packed and ratty duffle bag thrown over his shoulder and tucking his head into a thin chain ending in something Keith thought he’d never see again. His breath catches looking at it, and his hand involuntarily makes the reach once more to grasp at it. If not the Blue Paladin, his Lance, then why would that dumb little charm be dangling at the dip of his collarbone.

Lance catches Keith’s eye on the necklace and shoves at his collar to cover it. “Let’s just get this over with. If I agree to go will you drop me off at a different swap or planet?”

“Where do you want to go?” Keith breaths, lowering his hand again and pulling his hood up to activate his cloaking. He can’t keep making Lance uneasy with his gaze or his emotions, he has to be confident in his approach to make sure he’s leaving with Lance no matter what.

“Earth, doy. That place is an absolute madhouse of trading right now, apparently.” Lance shrugs, beginning to walk before Keith’s even thought of leading him to his pod. Keith’s communicator pings again, and Lance glances back, “You should let your little buddies know you’ve got your little helper, don’t worry.”

Keith follows slowly a few steps before he thinks to jog ahead so he can seem authoritative and bring Lance to the pod. “How long have you been swapping?” He pulls out his device so he can look like he’s collecting general info, but he’s almost frozen looking at it, where Pidge has messaged him several times about strange readings feeding from the tracker. He has several missed calls from Hunk as well, and one each from Shiro, his mother, and Allura. “And what is your origin?”

Lance cuts his eyes to the side. “I’ve been swapping for a few months. I’m not really at liberty to discuss anything else unless I’m talking to the Blade heads themselves. So, you’ll be on a need to know basis.” There’s a quiet way they walk that’s almost familiar to Keith, but Lance’s frame is defensive and cagey, which Keith has no idea how to approach.

The pod is closer, but Keith leads them instead to where he had stayed the night again, hoping to rent a space to process how to handle this best. He can’t just abduct Lance—especially if it isn’t him, by some technological fluke that is the Hunk and Pidge made with love device. “Fair enough.” Keith finds himself saying. “I will be able to take you up and get you to the base tomorrow. Tonight, we’ll get you boarded and guarded until our lift-off.”

“Ooo.” Lance coos, and the sound makes Keith want to punch into a wall. The likeness is too uncanny to be a fluke, and he knows better. “It’s barely afternoon, we really have to wait until tomorrow for lifting?” When Keith glances at Lance, he sees a longing gaze fixed to the sky, and Keith decides that Lance has either been cloned or is completely without recall past his months missing. They can work with either, though one if clearly preferred.

“Standard procedure.” Keith finally says when he tears his gaze away, his throat very dry.

* * *

Keith drops a sizable bag of coin on the counter in front of the boarding woman when she sees him and makes the most disgusted face she can muster, but she moves aside in the end to let Keith and Lance into the building. Lance follows Keith step by step, never faltering, and Keith wonders what he feels truly in this position. Does he feel any pull at all to the other man? The pull Keith’s felt in longing for the months he’s been without the other, insistent and ever-present.

“Blades are rich, huh.” Lance finally mutters when they enter the dingy room, a large bed of hay and a floor more dirt than concrete. He flops onto the bed without ceremony, sprawling, and asks, “Are you going to buy me dinner, too?”

“Yes.” Keith says, leaving and closing the door behind him. His heart wrenches the second the door is closed, and he resists the urge to throw it back open to ensure Lance is still there. He needs to regain his composure, needs to signal his team, and needs to keep Lance in one place without spooking him into a corner if he’s not aware of how lost he is. He finds the woman again to ask for food, and she rolls her dozen eyes and vaguely explains that it will be delivered shortly.

When Keith returns to the room, he lingers outside of the door to debrief his team very formally. Predictably, the moment his message is received by the previous members of Voltron, he is hounded by messages. They have his coordinates, though, and he has more pressing matters. He opens the door to the room again to find Lance…pretending to be asleep. It’s too stiff to be true, but his breathing is steady, nevertheless. He doesn’t trust Keith, Keith realizes, and there’s no reason for him to. Keith takes a seat next to the door, playing guard, but he can’t help but stare Lance down beneath his mask, no matter how uneasy the other might already be.

What did he wake up to? Who had found him and when had he thought to hide his Altean marks? The dirt and grime covering them was beginning to wipe away with Lance’s head on a cushion, and the way his hair fluffed up on the straw and sheets was so familiar to Keith. He aborted his gaze elsewhere before he had to force down a more obvious shade of emotion he couldn’t afford right now.

Lance rolls, his eyebrows pinched in his feigned sleep.

“Wrinkles.” Keith finds himself saying, automatically. He stills his own breath at the word, and Lance cracks his eyes open, expression softening effectively.

Keith hears a tray being set outside and thinks better than to grab it just yet, because Lance props himself up to gaze directly into Keith’s mask. “Take your hood back down.” Keith complies, and Lance’s expression doesn’t change as it dissolves away. He says, “I can tell you still think I’m the Blue Paladin, and I want you to know even if I was somehow, which I am not, I can’t help you with whatever the Blade knows.” Keith stays carefully neutral to the admission, “Now, go get my dinner.”

Keith does, because of course he’s going to feed the weak looking Lance. “I will inform my team of that.” He says, carefully. When he hands Lance the tray of food, Lance immediately begins breaking bread and other parts of the meal into halves for the both of them, which Keith ignores.

“You look familiar.” Lance says around a bite full of grey chili-esque soup. Keith is still at the door again, but he has no mask to hide his minutely changed expression, and Lance latches onto it. “You were the Red Paladin.” Something in his voice is a bit too gleeful, but it goes away quickly with his next words, “I’m sorry. You must be very frustrated about losing your team member.” His words are somber suddenly, and his spoon plays at his next bite while he looks down onto the food. “You’re not the first person who I’ve gotten their hopes up, you know. The guy had a ton of fans, it seems.”

“He does.” Keith says, emphasizing present tense. “And thank you.”

* * *

_Lance’s bright smile and eyes shine twicefold when he catches sight of the slight Blade member at the edge of the street, and Keith feels himself smiling something stupid in return, glad for his mask to cover it. Lance waves in earnest to Keith himself, then, and Keith takes a moment to make sure his patrolling partner across the street isn’t aware before he gives a little wave back. Later, Keith knows, Lance will wind his arms around him and pout and ask if he was coming then why didn’t he get dressed up like Lance did and stand on the pretty boy float with him, in all of his Voltron glory. Keith won’t give a real answer, but he’ll like hearing how Lance wants to show him off, too. They treasure each other, that way._

_Later, Keith will smudge his lips against Lance’s and they’ll curl up together because Keith has decided to withdraw from missions for the foreseeable future in order to take Lance home with him, home to his family, where he would like to propose with his father’s ring._

* * *

Keith wakes up with his arm outstretched, and at the end of his hand across the room he sees Lance, sitting up in his hay bed and staring Keith down.

“I’ve got a question.” Lance begins, eyes heavy and looking like he’s gone without a wink of sleep. “What happened to the Blue Paladin, anyway?”

Keith lowers his hand, curling his fingers in as he does so. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s slacked on his watch. There are a million excuses he could create about why, but he knows it is only relief that brought his guard down so far, even if they were still in the thick of it. Even if Lance had no idea who he was or how to get back to that who, he was still in the room with Keith, and it’s the most secure and at peace and _relieved_ he’s felt in the middle of the night in a long time. “We lost him.” Keith utters, moving to rummage in his belt for a goo ration packet to have something to worry. “He was part of a diplomatic parade on a planet on the pretty much other side of the galaxy and he, along with all of the diplomats present, were abducted by a still kicking Galra force.” Most of the diplomats present then have been recovered with varying degrees injury, only two dead. Allura had hypothesized there was still a faction dedicated to pursuing Lotor’s research in mech enhancement with Alteans or other alien races, and Keith had nothing to object the idea. His eyes skim the jagged scar by Lance’s temple, wondering what the man will think of it when he’s himself again.

“Lost him.” Lance repeats, humming and stretching his legs. He lets his head drop between his shoulder blades, his dusty fluffs of hair sticking up at all angles. “Tell me about that some more.”

Keith shifts in place, a lot of uncomfortable feelings cropping up at the conversation. “We didn’t assign enough guard to the event, but I was one of the few there. We should have been paying attention, but it was a big and rowdy event and the nobility all had their own guard.” There’s something stiff about his reporting, his words very carefully carded together, but he can’t keep it up when Lance looks up at him again. “You—He…was surprised I was there. We don’t run into each other a lot when we’re working. We missed each other. It was a hot day, kind of like it is here in this dusty hell, and there was a ton of sun in everyone’s eyes.”

“ _Hijune_ has three suns, after all.” Lance’s voice is quiet, but it’s enough for Keith.

“Put yourself in those shoes. Can you picture it?” There’s a commotion somewhere in the building that has Keith’s skin crawling, and he stands so he can better defend them in case anything comes up.

Lance sits a little straighter, hiding his eyes still. “It was hot…” He stops himself, shaking his head. “This is nonsense, dude, how would I be a paladin? I don’t know jack all but I know not to jump to conclusions _that_ far.”

“Try.” Keith ducks his head a little and approaches the bed, crouching to meet Lance’s eyes. Lance’s face is all pinched up, irritated and frustrated and confused all in one. “Wrinkles.” Keith faintly says, and Lance’s expression is suddenly vulnerable.

“It was hot, and you were on guard, but it was a surprise…” Lance says, easing the pinch in his eyebrows. His eyes are brighter than earlier, but there’s something swimming in them Keith doesn’t like. “When I woke up a few months ago I had no idea where or who I was.” His voice is quieter, pleading with Keith to give him a different solution that makes more sense than the obvious to Keith. “An Altean man found me and said I had been tested on when I said I couldn’t remember anything. He said many of us have been through the same, but there aren’t many survivors.”

Keith pleas again, “Try, Lance.”

Lance lifts his hand, and the distance between them is just enough to allow the motion he proceeds. It’s a mirror of Keith’s own constant aborted one. He’s yearning, too. “It was hot, and I was in a parade…” His voice is shakier, trying, and Keith gives his hand to meet them together. “You were there, but it was a surprise, and I hadn’t seen you in…weeks.” His other hand moves to grab at the chain around his neck, the dumb little Red Lion charm dangling there. “And I saw you…and I knew something great was going to happen, and you made sure nobody was looking at you not paying attention…then you waved.”

Quietly, Keith allows, “Then I waved.” Their fingers clasp around each other, and Keith feels grounded, solid, _home_.

Lance surges forward, engulfing Keith in his arms in a vice-like grip. “Keith,” He breathes, “You found me.” Keith hugs back just as fiercely, strong arms supporting Lance’s frail state. He tries and fails to speak, overwhelmed with Lance’s presence in his arms being so solid, so undeniable. He sinks a hand into Lance’s hair, needing him closer, and Lance pulls away just enough to clash their lips together. “I love you.” Lance practically whimpers into him, “I missed you.”

“I’m sorry I took so long.” Keith tries to say, ignoring Lance’s shaking head and kissing him again, “I love you.”

* * *

The next night they have together, Keith wakes up with his arm outstretched, and Lance is there, on the other end of it, solid and warm. There is a band on his finger now, a promise that Keith has made instead of waiting for Earth, and when Lance wakes up in a few hours he will melt into Keith’s arms again, like he has waited for no other security.


End file.
